Advances big in small devices

WASHINGTON Â? It was a good year for computers Â? if you don't think of computers as simply a combination of monitor, keyboard, hard drive, CD/DVD burner, and some version of Windows or Mac OS X.

Many computing advances in 2008 occurred outside traditional desktop and laptop machines. Some happened in devices once labeled "peripherals," such as smart phones and digital cameras, while others took place entirely on the Web.

Start with smart phones, the kind of computer that an increasing number of people carry with them every waking moment. Apple's iPhone 3G got the headlines, but 2008's bigger phone story was the iPhone's App Store.

This simple catalogue of add-on programs (also available on the iPod Touch) showed what clever programmers could do when given access to a device that can connect to the Internet on the go, find its location via GPS or the signals of nearby transmitter towers, then display data on a roomy, high-resolution screen. It also showed competing smart phone builders how far they'd slipped Â? the process of installing programs on Windows Mobile devices looked unbearably primitive in comparison.

The iPhone 3G soon had company in the form of T-Mobile's G1. This device, the first to run Google's Android software, came with its own tap-to-install collection of third-party programs Â? much of it as location-smart as the best iPhone applications.

A similar evolution is taking place with digital cameras. These gadgets already include sophisticated software and, in some cases, the ability to upload pictures to the Web; last year, they started learning how to find themselves with help from add-ons like the location-aware Eye-Fi Explore memory card or built-in GPS receivers. In 2009, cameras may be able to do something their owners often cannot: remember where and when the picture was taken.

Beyond a phone and a camera, a tech traveler's baggage traditionally includes a laptop. But last year, that laptop was often replaced by a "netbook." These ultra-cheap, ultra-light machines (usually $300 or so and less than three pounds) ditch standard computing functions such as DVD playback to focus on Web access. The cheapest models in this category don't run Windows either, instead employing a version of the free, open-source Linux operating system.

Yes, after a decade of predictions and wishes, Linux has hit the mass market Â? giving Microsoft yet another headache.

The company that would have led any computing-year-in-review column five years ago often found itself marginalized in 2008. Yahoo spurned Microsoft's merger offer, and Windows Vista still isn't winning over customers' hearts, even after a large bug-fix update (Service Pack 1) and a curious series of ads starring Jerry Seinfeld and a collection of random users declaring "I am a PC." (I feel like an embattled minority every time I pronounce Vista "not that bad." Then again, I was never the biggest fan of XP.)

Apple, meanwhile, took a bigger bite than ever out of Microsoft's lunch. By the fall, it had become the third-biggest vendor in the United States, after Hewlett-Packard and Dell, with about 10 percent of the U.S. market and a considerably larger chunk of the consumer business.

One development that favored Apple: The operating system on a particular computer became less important than ever, thanks to the rising popularity and growing capability of Web-based applications. Free Web-hosted programs such as Flickr, Mint, Facebook, Google Docs and Hulu.com can replace your photo album, your personal-finance manager, your address book, your word processor and even your TV.

The most relevant program still residing on a computer's hard drive has to be its Web browser. That improved significantly in 2008, thanks to an upgrade to the Firefox browser, the debut of Google's Chrome and the arrival, in beta-test form, of Microsoft's Internet Explorer 8.

Compared with the computing business, the electronics industry seemed relatively quiet. Yes, Blu-ray defeated HD DVD in the battle to provide a high-definition successor to the DVD, but most customers ignored Blu-ray, much as they ignored the earlier format war.

Movie-download receivers such as the Apple TV and the Roku Netflix Player made it easier to watch a movie off the Internet, but they continued to suffer from an inexplicably skimpy selection of titles to rent or buy online. Once again, the major movie studios won't take "yes" for an answer when it comes to movie downloads.

The transition from analog to digital TV got another 12 months closer, but despite widely available digital converter boxes and ever-cheaper high-def sets, things still look shaky. This year will probably bring advances we haven't even imagined yet, but many people in the digital business will be happy if they just get through the analog shutoff in one piece.